WGBH panel revisits Vietnam documentary series

Monday

Nov 23, 2009 at 12:01 AMNov 23, 2009 at 11:11 PM

To commemorate Veterans Day, the WGBH studios hosted a screening of “Vietnam: A Television History” and panel discussion about the series. The studio showed the final segment of the 12-part series, originally aired in 1983, documenting the events of the Vietnam War.

Christina Braccio

To commemorate Veterans Day, the WGBH studios hosted a screening of “Vietnam: A Television History” and panel discussion about the series. The studio showed the final segment of the 12-part series, originally aired in 1983, documenting the events of the Vietnam War.

“It seemed like an appropriate way to remember and honor the sacrifices that veterans have made throughout the years and around the world,” WGBH Executive Producer Judith Vecchione said.

After the screening, the panel, featuring a producer of the series, Elizabeth Deane, Harvard University professor Hue-Tam Ho Tai and University of Virginia professor Marc Selverstone, discussed the impact the series made on the American people when it first aired.

“The series opened up for viewers the ability to have a meaningful dialogue about the war and allowed people to understand the war in a more profound way,” Vecchione said. “We wanted to create a dialogue about America’s role in the world after Vietnam.”

Deane said the series had a sense of immediacy behind it because it was being filmed in the years immediately following the war.

“When we started filming, people were exhausted — the war had gone on for so long and had been so painful,” Deane said. “There was a kind of quiet in the landscape, but a confusion as well. It was in that moment of quiet that we went to work.”

Selverstone, who teaches history, said the series greatly affected his life when he first saw it in college.

“The film was important in my life to encourage me in studying history,” he said. “I was studying trumpet at Berklee, and I remember being captivated by it. It was very important at the time, and I can still use it in class.”

A Kenneth T. Young Professor of Sino-vietnamese History at Harvard, Ho Tai said the Vietnamese were under extreme economic and political pressures when the series first aired.

“You have this feeling that it was very raw for the Vietnamese,” Ho Tai said. “People had not made peace with what happened, and there was a lot of pent-up anger and emotion.”

Lincoln resident Cathy Moritz said she was greatly influenced by the series when it first aired.

“This war really shaped our generation,” Moritz said. “I remember watching it several times. It’s impossible to understand how influential it was on our generation.”

Selverstone said that the political dynamics the series portrays are still relevant to how the United States conducts war today.

“The film raises a whole host of questions about how we fight wars we think are necessary,” Selverstone said. “And, of course, the necessity of this war hangs over many of these conversations.”

The panelists also cautioned against using lessons learned in Vietnam in wars America is fighting today.

“No two situations are the same,” Ho Tai said. “Whether it be Vietnam and Iraq or Vietnam and Afghanistan, to apply the lessons in one to another is extremely dangerous.”

“History should encourage us to thing about the kinds of questions you want to ask about the situation in Afghanistan,” Selverstone said. “It’s hard to look at the past for answers to questions in the present.”